He Came to Save Sinners - Rev. David S. Huffman
In February 1979 two men from West Virginia made there way to South Carolina where they engaged in multiple crimes including robbery, assault and battery, kidnapping, rape, and ultimately the murder of four people. Seeking to evade capture, they barricaded themselves in a motel in Myrtle Beach. During the standoff with law enforcement, one of the men, an ex-convict, committed suicide to avoid going back to prison. The second man eventually surrendered to police, was tried, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death. Twelve years later, on April 26, 1991, justice was served, and his sentence was at last carried out in Columbia, SC.
Perhaps some of you are familiar with this story. It made national news headlines. The man’s name was Ronald “Rusty” Woomer. There is, however, more to this story. The late Charles Colson in his book The Body (1992) describes what transpired in the intervening years as Rusty was incarcerated on death row. Local Christian journalist and broadcaster Bob McAlister visited prisoners on death row to share the gospel with them and encourage them. While leaving to go home one Friday afternoon he passed by Rusty’s cell. He saw Rusty laying in the floor, covered in filth, roaches crawling all over him, and pornographic magazines strewn about the tiny room. Bob decided to speak to him. At first, he received no response. Bob continued to speak, telling him about Jesus, until he could hear Rusty begin to faintly say the name of Jesus. Bob at last said, “Rusty, look around you, son. Look at what you are living in.” Rusty sat up and began to look around. Bob gently continued, “Your cell is filthy, and so are you. The roaches have taken over, and you’re spiritually a dead man, son. Jesus can give you something better. Don’t you want to pray and give your life to him instead?” At that moment, Rusty began to nod his head and tears began to stream down his cheeks, the first he had shed in fifteen years. Awkwardly, Rusty prayed,
“Jesus, I’ve hurt a lot of people. Ain’t no way I deserve you to hear me. But I’m tired and I’m sick and I’m lonely. Please forgive me, Jesus, for everything I’ve done. I don’t know much about you, but I’m willin’ to learn, and I thank you for listen’ to me.”
For many of us, we hear stories of “jailhouse conversions” and we are not a little skeptical. That may be justified. But Rusty’s conversion was the real deal. From that moment on his life dramatically changed. On Monday morning, Bob returned to the prison to check on Rusty. What he found was truly astonishing. As he walked up to his cell, it was spotless. The dirt, the roaches, and the pornographic magazines were all gone. The walls had been scrubbed, the bed was made, and the scent of disinfectant filled the air. Rusty had spent the whole weekend cleaning. He explained to Bob, “I figured that’s what Jesus wanted me to do.” For the remaining years of his life, Rusty grew as a Christian. He died believing in the promise that though he was a great sinner, he was someone for whom Christ had died to redeem.
I have often been surprised to hear professing Christians balk at these kinds of stories. Why should God show mercy to someone as vile as Rusty Woomer? Why should he let someone so wicked into his heaven? The answer is given to us by the Lord himself, through his servant Paul. In 1 Timothy 1:15 Paul writes, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” For me personally, this is the most precious verse of the Bible. It sums up the message of the gospel. It means that our Lord did not come to save “basically good people.” Rather, he came to save the ungodly, his enemies. Paul elsewhere writes, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” and “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (Romans 5:8, 10).
Some believers struggle here with this teaching. “Enemy of God? I’ve never hated God.” If we say something like this, it is likely we have not yet appreciated the gravity of what Scripture teaches us about sin. Summarized in the Shorter Catechism, “Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God” (Q. 14). Who of us could ever say we have never failed to do what God has commanded or broken one of his commands? And at the heart of sin-any and all sin-is a hostility toward God. It is a declaration that we believe our way is better than God’s.
As well, denying we are sinners is itself evidence of sin. John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. . . If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8, 10). The very nature of sober judgement is agreeing with God that we are what he says we are. And if this is not enough to convince us that we are sinners, we must then contend with the inescapable reality of death. It is the consequence of sin: “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23; cf. 5:12). Suffice it to say, if there were no sin, there would be no death. And since death comes to us all, then none of us may ever legitimately claim we are not enemies of God, sinners who need a Savior.
I belabor this point simply to underscore the wonderful news of 1 Timothy 1:15: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” It is the blessed good news our church proclaims. Yet Paul did not stop here. As we know, he continues his emphasis on this truth by declaring that he is the “foremost” or “chief” of those who are called “sinners.” Consider for a moment that before Paul was converted, he describes himself as “formerly a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” (vs. 13). Elsewhere he says of himself, “I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9). Here Paul was merely echoing the voice of Jesus, who said Paul was persecuting him even as he persecuted his church (Acts 9:4, 5).
When the news first broke that Paul had been converted, it was too good to be true. Many were fearful, believing it might be a ruse to draw faithful followers of Jesus out into the open so that Paul could more easily arrest them and make them suffer (cf. Acts 9:20, 21, 26). But, even if it was true (and it was), how could someone so vile be the object of God’s great mercy? Paul answers this question himself in 1 Timothy 1:16:
“But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.”
I recall the first time this passage was brought home to me. One of our fellow pastors, Mark Ross, was preaching on this text. The light dawned for me on just how profoundly wonderful the gospel is. If God can save the foremost of sinners, who can he not save? If he can save Paul, vile offender that he was, surely,then, he can save a Rusty Woomer too. Yes, he can even save me!
The English Reformer, Thomas Bilney descibes how 1 Timothy1:15 brought great relief to his troubled soul. He wrote,
“I chanced upon this sentence of St. Paul (O most sweet and comfortable sentence to my soul!) in 1 Timothy 1. “It is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be embraced, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am the chief and principal.” This one sentence, through God’s instruction and inward working . . . did so exhilarate my heart, being before wounded with the guilt of my sins, and being almost in despair, that even immediately I seemed unto myself inwardly to feel a marvelous comfort and quietness, insomuch that “my bruised bones leaped for joy” (Psalm 51). After this, the Scripture began to be more pleasant unto me than the honey of the honey-comb.” (Quoted in The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe)
Such freedom and joy enabled Bilney to suffer a martyr’s death, being burned at the stake because he refused to cease proclaiming the marvelous grace and mercy of God in Christ.
When God shows mercy to sinners, not treating them as their sin deserves, but rather reconciling them to himself through the death of his Son, his glory is magnified (Eph. 1:3-6). Who is a God like this, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression? (Micah 7:18)
This is the good news we are given to proclaim. For such sinners we should pray, that they might be converted. In both our preaching and our praying, perhaps in the Lord’s patient and kind mercy he may extended to the ones we least would expect will sing his praise. Then, they will join us in the eternal song,“To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Tim. 1:17)